Tales of an Irritable Detective
by HotCrossPigeon
Summary: Sherlock catches the flu. How does the sickly detective cope with this bothersome development, not to mention the unwelcome attempts of his 'friends' to help him get better? Well, he behaves like a petulant child of course. Poor John. A completely shameless Sherlock sickfic. Hurt/Comfort abound.
1. Chapter 1: The Sickly Detective

_Tales of an Irritable Detective._

_Hopefully, this will become a multi-chaptered work; if I can find the time to update and providing any of you lovely readers take a shine to it. Mostly hurt/comfort/humour. Featuring Sherlock and John, with appearances from everyone else – when they poke their noses in where they're not wanted and make Sherlock even more miserable. I'll do my best to stay in character, let me know if you spot anything out of place. Enjoy. _

_Chapter 1: The Sickly Detective._

…

…

It started when John was rudely awakened at roughly half past three in the morning by the sound of his flatmate.

This wouldn't be an unusual occurrence if the sound was some type of chemical explosion, or the haunting melodic pull of a bow on strings, or even some rogue gunshots. All of these things were fairly common, and John had actually taught himself to sleep through the worst of them because otherwise he wouldn't be able to get any sleep at all. Mrs Hudson had a pair of good quality ear plugs for when Sherlock got a little too boisterous during his bored phases. But this sound was different, it was unexpected, and it snapped John's medical instincts into gear immediately. He pushed back his covers and ran down the stairs as fast as his cold bare feet allowed.

This sound was of Sherlock trying to cough up his internal organs into the toilet. John was almost out of breath by the time he got to the bathroom, but it was more to do with the frigid temperature, overbearing worry, and his half-awake state, than overexertion. It was freezing in the flat, and he wished he'd thought to go to bed in more than his t-shirt and boxers, or perhaps thrown on one of his jumpers or pyjama bottoms before legging it down the stairs in his underwear.

But well, it was Sherlock. And he cared so much about the bloody man that he would have legged it down the stairs naked. Wait, forget that last thought, you can blame the aforementioned half-awake state for that.

_Not_ gay. _Not_ a nudist. Just _worried_.

John realised, with a gnawing guilt, that he really should have noticed that Sherlock was sick earlier, because he was a doctor and a damn good one at that. But the detective was ludicrously secretive when it came to the matter of his own health, and John had thought that the avoidance of any contact with the outside world, the subsequent locking himself in his room, and general grumpiness of the past few days was just down to Sherlock being… well, _Sherlock_.

John had assumed he was sulking about not having a case. The mess in the bathroom, the dark lump of limbs slumped by the toilet, and the sound of haggard breathing echoing around the tiled walls however, told him immediately otherwise.

Bugger.

John waited anxiously at the bathroom door, bare feet growing cold and goose bumps threatening to pop out on the skin of his bare arms. He rubbed at them anxiously. Knowing his presence wasn't going to be received well, but not wanting to leave in case Sherlock did, begrudgingly, need him. Such was the nature of their peculiar friendship.

There were times, however uncommon these times may be, that Sherlock allowed John to glimpse other facets of his personality beyond the astonishing brilliant and often callously accurate detective that everyone else saw. Sherlock was human, after all, despite his willingness to let everyone believe the contrary.

"It gives me an air of mystery, John." He had sneered. "You can't kill an idea. Sherlock Holmes is invincible."

But John had seen Sherlock's eyebrows furrow in real pain and his teeth clench in viscous anger, had witnessed his lips quirk into a true smile that softened his features and warmed his pale eyes, had noticed his hands tremble in loss, his eyes close in shame. And he treasured those tiny fragments of Sherlock that were usually hidden behind his cold unaffected expression, smirking lips and calculating eyes.

Other times however, and these were more frequent, Sherlock shut everyone out, including John. Often shoving his concerned flatmate out of the door and locking it steadfastly between them without uttering a single word to explain himself.

John hoped this would be one of the former times, where he was allowed to see Sherlock in a new light, and where he might better understand what made the Great Detective who he was. The latter times - where Sherlock might as well have been a statue, or a rebellious teenager slamming doors, or a bloody wispy spectral entity that was most definitely not human, and on some higher plane than him and everyone else in the known universe - always left him feeling somewhat hurt and confused. Until, of course, he realised that he was dealing with Sherlock and not a normal friend, and that the detective probably didn't really mean to swear his tits off at John in five different languages, or give him the cold shoulder for an entire week, or set John's favourite jumper on fire and stick it in the fridge under a jar full of pickled cat livers, and he really, probably, just wanted to be left alone for bit.

Everyone needed their space, John could appreciate that.

John would leave a cup of calming tea outside the bedroom door on these occasions, and calmly retaliate upon finding his clothes ruined by surreptitiously placing one of Sherlock's forgotten mouldy experiments into the detective's coat pocket.  
After a while Sherlock would venture out of his room. And while he wouldn't outwardly apologise, he would eventually make it up to John by purchasing the milk, or flashing him a genuine half-smile, or not playing his violin too screechingly in the early hours.

Those times were when something was clearly wrong with Sherlock, but John had never found out quite what it was. Those times, the situation had been dealt with the same way Sherlock dealt with most things in his life. Alone. In perfect solitude, he would pick up the pieces of his mask, inspect it meticulously and mend it until there was no flaw left, then he would place it back on before stepping back into the world again. But that wasn't going to work this time. This time, John knew exactly what was ailing the detective, and it was his area of expertise.

Sherlock Holmes was sick.

The evidence was clear. The detective was sprawled on the bathroom floor with his head in the toilet. John didn't have to be a qualified medical professional to work this one out.

Sherlock flicked a pale eye at John, and growled something incoherent into the porcelain.

"Uhm," said John, cautiously, teetering on the threshold and practically oozing concern, "You okay? I was just, well, I was up and I heard you. Do you need anything?"

Sherlock stumbled to his feet, steadied himself with a slender hand on the wall, scowled in his flatmate's general direction, and wobbled back into his room. John took the initiative, having not been told to piss off yet and taking that as an acceptance of his presence, he slipped easily into Doctor mode and followed the younger man in case he collapsed.

"I can get you some paracetemol, if you like." He ventured.

Sherlock's scowl deepened, and he sat on the edge of his bed with his head in his hands, obviously deeply annoyed that he had been caught throwing up and now had no way of fooling John into making him think otherwise.

"You ran down here in your underwear." Sherlock observed raspily. "Your concern is overbearing and unwanted. I am fine."

John scoffed, folding his arms and trying to cover up the fact that he was now very aware that he was, as Sherlock pointed out, clad only in his boxer shorts and t-shirt and was now feeling a little exposed.

"You clearly have a fever, Sherlock." He countered. "That mixed with the vomiting and the coughing and I would have to say that you've come down with the seasonal flu. You'll have to stay in bed."

Sherlock lifted his head and regarded John with an icy look, as if it was John's fault that he was like this and he would be taking measures to exact revenge on him soon. His brain seemed to take a few moments to catch up with John's verdict of his illness and then he managed, somehow, to appear even more deranged than before. "Tedious." The sickly detective rasped, looking thoroughly put out at the idea that he might be ill, despite the fact that he must have deduced the fact for himself. "Dull! Can't you make another diagnosis, something more interesting?"

John screwed his face up, incredulously. Of course Sherlock would want to come down with something death-defying rather than mundane, it was just like him.

He gestured to the rain battering the pavements outside, almost threateningly. "I could open the windows if you like, and then stick your head out there and you can try to develop pneumonia?"

"That would be less dull," approved Sherlock, as if actually considering the idea, "but would put me out of commission for an indefinite amount of time. Also, you would be able to diagnose me in a matter of seconds, having suggested the idea, and of course there's no fun if I can't deduce the malady from the symptoms for myself." With that decided, he closed his eyes again, and John found himself shaking his head, perplexed at the reasoning, but glad he wouldn't have to drag Sherlock bodily away from the windows now that he had no desire to worsen his condition just to make it 'less dull'.

"You're an idiot." John concluded. And then when the detective failed to respond, he came forward. "Oi," he said, "get back into bed."

"Mff." Mumbled Sherlock, his hands muffling his mouth, he looked about ready to pass out sitting upright.

John retreated to the kitchen, fetching a sick bowl, a glass of water and some paracetemol which he quickly placed at Sherlock's bedside. Maybe if he had everything in reach the bloody man wouldn't feel the need to get up again, and John wouldn't have to have the pleasure of finding him nose down in the carpet later on.

Sherlock's head was hanging low, he looked to be almost asleep.

"Hey, I think you'd be more comfortable if you were lying down." He said softly.

No reply, John might have imagined that quiet snore.

He pushed the detective back into bed, holding him firmly by the shoulders and fully expecting a wild retaliation and incessant grousing at being manhandled in such a way, but it proved to be a surprisingly easy feat, considering how Sherlock would usually loathe any form of physical contact. He was rarely so compliant; the poor sod must really have exhausted himself this time. John found himself worried, a little shocked by this sleepy, vulnerable man who had somehow taken over his bristling, indignant, bloody annoying at times, flatmate.

"Get out." Sherlock managed, voice nothing but a low croak but somehow able to deliver his usual amount of cutting scorn. Ah, _there_ was the ratty, insufferable man that he knew so well. "Go 'way. Get your mitts… off… people will talk…"

"They do little else." John murmured, comfortingly, relieved at the familiar complaint. He switched off the light, casting Sherlock's pale face in shadow. "Just sleep it off, Sherlock. I'll be in the kitchen if you need me. And take those pills."

And with a small annoyed rumble at the unwanted affection, and a harsh cough into his pillow, the detective complied.

…

…

_Please review, I realise this was quite short, but do you think this is worth continuing? All feedback is appreciated and will be replied to :) _


	2. Chapter 2: Of Teabags and Troubles

_Thank you for all the amazingly encouraging feedback :) apologies for the clunky structure of the last chapter, I'll try to improve with this one. It's a little longer too. Happy reading!_

Chapter 2: Of Teabags and Troubles

…

…

John reluctantly left the flat in the morning to pick up some essentials, namely milk and bread, from the corner shop.

It was bloody freezing outside, and had he been Sherlock he would have wound a dark scarf around his neck and turned up his collar against the biting wind, but he didn't, because he was John Watson and he didn't have a flair for the dramatic, he preferred to be comfortable. He plonked on his coat, did the zip up all the way to the top and marched to the shop with some carrier bags stuck in his pocket.

Bloody hell.

No wonder Sherlock had a cold; John could feel one sneaking up on him with all this frigid air hanging around the pavements. He was surprised it wasn't snowing out. He smiled at the cashier, paid for his shopping and legged it back to the flat before he turned into an ice sculpture, breath fogging out in front of him like an old dragon. His fingers were numb but they managed to stick the key in the door of number 221b and he nudged it open with his shoulder, lumbered inside with his finds, and shut it quickly behind him. Leaning against it to keep the wind out.

Mrs. Hudson poked her head out of 221a to see him shivering in the hallway. He smiled a greeting at her, brandishing his shopping bags to explain why he'd been out on a Sunday when the weather was so bleeding awful.

"Oh, hello dear," she smiled, "You should have said if you wanted some milk, I've got plenty. You'll catch your death out there, it's the devil's weather!" She cast her eyes to the side of him where there was an unmistakeable tall dark indifferent person-shaped hole, "Where's Sherlock gone off to?"

As if Sherlock would _ever_ accompany John to get milk.

"I was hoping he could tell me where he's hidden my tin of _Earl Grey_, only Marjorie's popping over and she refuses to drink anything else, the daft woman, I mean, I ask you, what's wrong with PG tips? He better not have used it in one of his experiments – those were _Twinings_, they weren't cheap."

John explained with a small sigh that Sherlock was in bed. And that if the damn man been at her tea stash he didn't know about it. "I'll keep a look out though, and if he wakes up later I'll ask him about it."

"Oh no, is he poorly?" Mrs Hudson whispered, as if Sherlock would be disturbed by the sound of anything louder, despite the fact that he was probably snoring his lungs out upstairs, completely oblivious to any outside stimulus for once. Her eyes were wide with motherly concern, "I'll make him some soup. Oh, he really should be taking better care of himself, I thought he was getting skinnier." And then when John inquired further, to see if Sherlock had been ill longer than just a few days, she murmured, "Well, he was looking a bit peaky yesterday, but I thought maybe he'd been playing about with those chemicals again and had a funny turn. He wouldn't let me in through the door, barricaded it with books, of all things. I would have tried to get in over the encyclopaedias, but my hip was playing up and he does enjoy his privacy, well, you know what he's like…"

John did indeed know what he was like. "I wouldn't worry, I'm sure it's just the flu, but he never does anything by half."

She nodded at him with a flustered little smile and retreated back into her flat with the assurance that he would let her know how Sherlock was faring.

John trudged up the seventeen steps to flat 221b with a heavy sigh, resolving to turn the heating up to unbearable levels and make an inordinate amount of steaming hot tea. He was about to put the milk away when he found Sherlock.

The bloody man was leaning heavily on the bathroom doorframe, and blinking owlishly.

John gave him a quick look up and down, and then put the milk in the fridge. Well, John reasoned, at least he looked no worse than he had last night, which was still admittedly not good, but not at death's door. No doubt the effort of getting up to go to the bathroom had made him a bit dizzy, that was all, and caused him to cling to the doorframe as if it were the only thing holding upright…

No, stop thinking like that. Sherlock wasn't close to collapse, he just had the flu. John was overreacting. There was no need for John annoy him with any outward concern. All he would get for his trouble was a heated glare anyway and perhaps a few choice swear words if Sherlock was feeling particularly grouchy. He certainly looked it.

"Did you steal Mrs. Hudson's teabags?" John said instead, resisting the urge to ask Sherlock if he was okay. Because he obviously wasn't, and Sherlock would not appreciate the sentiment.

Sherlock stood up a little straighter, but didn't let go of the doorframe, his hand inching along the wall to keep his balance. "What?" he managed to grunt, looking a little surprised to find John back in the flat. His eyes were squinting.

"The Earl Grey, Sherlock."

"Hmm?"

"Did you pinch it?" asked John, again. He couldn't tell if the man was being deliberately obtuse or he really didn't understand the question for once. Sherlock let go of the wall experimentally and wobbled on his feet, and John folded his arms so that he wouldn't instinctively reach out to steady his friend.

"Hmm." Sherlock contemplated, and leaned on the wall again. Obviously, trying to stand on his own hadn't worked out as planned.

John let out an exasperated sigh. "You did steal it, didn't you. Sherlock, you can't just go around thieving other people's things out of their cupboards!"

"I did _not_ go through her cupboards, John." Came the calm reply. "They are strictly off limits, and even I respect her privacy... Mostly."

John looked at him with his eyebrows raised.

"The worktop however, is fair game as far as I'm concerned."

"So you _did_ steal her teabags?"

"I may have pilfered the Earl Grey, yes. A little."

John didn't know how you could steal something 'a little', but he merely breathed out a long huff of breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Well you better give them back. She's on the warpath."

Sherlock blinked in puzzlement, as if trying to imagine Mrs. Hudson truly angry. It had only happened the once, from what John could remember, but it had been very much deserved on the Consulting Detective's part. Let's just say that Sherlock had done something positively ghastly to her mother's best linen which involved a small flatulent duck and a string of brutal homicides, and leave it at that.

The detective waved a disinterested hand at John, while his other clutched onto the wall in a white-knuckled grip. "Nonsense, John. She despises Earl Grey. Too citrus-y. She can't even use lemon-scented bleach; she loathes the scent so much. And she doesn't much like the friend who gave them to her either, probably for the aforementioned reason that she can't stand the stuff. And Marjorie also, who is the only acquaintance of hers who is known to drink it. So essentially, I'm doing her a favour. And besides which, they are now quite inedible." He brought the spare hand to his head, frowning. "That's not the right word is it…? Un-quaffable?" the pale fingers began to knead his brow as if he had a headache. Which he probably did. John made a mental note to grab another pack of paracetemol from the kitchen. "In any case, you can no longer use them to make tea. They're more suited to warding off mosquitoes."

John wondered what an earth you could do to a humble teabag to make them into insect repellent. Sherlock stood there for a moment or two, hand dropping as if he couldn't maintain the effort of holding it aloft anymore, leaning even more heavily on the wall with every passing second. His eyes slipped closed, and his head fell to the side, hitting the wall with a _thunk_.

"Uh…" said John, hovering awkwardly. "Sherlock..?"

The detective kept his eyes closed.

"Sherlock? Hey. You all right? Want me to, uh -"

"I'm fine, John." Came the mumble into the patterned wallpaper.

_You don't look fine_, thought John. "Right. 'Course." He said aloud, without really agreeing at all. "Uhm. Do you fancy a cup of tea?"

"Mm."

"I'll just go make one, meet me in the kitchen, okay?"

He forced himself to walk away. Although while he filled the kettle and got out the mugs he caught himself glancing up to see if Sherlock was still slumped by the bathroom door.

He was.

Fantastic - how was he supposed to help the bloody man without getting a scornful rebuttal for his efforts? Sherlock never accepted help from anyone, seeing it as both an infringement on his personal space and an insult to his vast intelligence. The man was an intolerable idiot sometimes. John got the milk out of the fridge with a sigh, sneaking another glance at the door.

Yep. Still there. Still slumped. Wonderful.

"Tea's ready." He called out. Sherlock's long legs were beginning to bend suspiciously in the middle like spindly flower stems, his curly-haired head getting decidedly lower down on the wall like the drooping head of a dying sunflower. "Sherlock."

There was no reply.

"Tea, Sherlock."

Nothing. The head was downright _lolling_ now. Shit.

He barely managed to put the mugs down in time and leg it to Sherlock's side before the man's legs bent fully and he slid, almost elegantly, with a soft _flump_, to a sitting position against the wall, eyes closed and mouth half open in a soft snore.

His flatmate, John concluded, was indeed an idiot.

"You bloody stupid…" he grumbled, squatting next to the prone body, and putting a firm hand on Sherlock's shoulder. He shook him. The head flopped forward, a mess of unruly dark curls. Another snore. "Oh for the love of - Sherlock! Wake up, you can't sleep here."

Sherlock's head tilted to the side, his lips parting in a soft mumble. "Sh." He ordered, somewhat sluggishly.

"Get up, you can't sleep on the floor." John explained. "You're sick. Come on, let's get you back into bed."

John had carried many a wounded man over his shoulder in Afghanistan, men who were much heavier than Sherlock, and laden down with clunky weapons and survival backpacks. Still, he had half a mind to leave the fool here. It would serve him right.

Oh, who was he kidding.

"Come on, up you go Sherlock." John said, resignedly. He pulled one of Sherlock's limp arms over his shoulder, and attempted to get the man to stand on his own two feet. This attempt failed immensely. Sherlock's limbs were uncooperative and unwilling to take any weight at all. The man was clearly completely dead to the world.

John was reminded of the Scandal in Belgravia case, where the infamous Irene Adler had drugged Sherlock to the point where the man had been as flaccid as a limp noodle, and hilariously unreserved, spouting off all kinds of nonsense to anyone who would listen. Which was quite a few people actually; Lestrade still had the evidence on his phone to use as blackmail at a later date, or simply for when he simply needed a good long laugh. John had resolved then to just make his barmy flatmate as comfortable as possible and just to let the drug run its course until it eventually wore off.

He supposed the same should work in this situation, Sherlock just needed to sleep off the illness. Although clearly having a spur-of-the-moment kip on a cold floor was a damned awful idea.

"Up you get." He heaved Sherlock up bodily over his uninjured shoulder, so that his curly head was upside down over John's back and his long legs dangled in the front. John held him firmly around the lower back in a fireman's lift; he adjusted his stance to accommodate the slim weight and headed to Sherlock's bedroom.

The man wasn't heavy at all, but he was altogether too gangly, and as such, the short journey there was rather clumsy and awkward, and John may have accidentally scuffed the man's ridiculously long legs against the wall a couple of times while trying to open the door.

He deposited the lump on the bed. And then, as an afterthought, put the duvet over him.

Sherlock just lay there, his breath coming out in little laboured snuffles. Definitely flu. He might have been adorable if he wasn't so maddening. All legs and arms and petulance.

"Right." John said to nobody in particular, rocking back on his heels slightly. "Well."

He went and got his cup of tea from the kitchen, distressed to find it lukewarm and with an odd floating skin on the top of it. He pondered the ramifications of popping the cup in the microwave to heat up and then decided against it. Not only was microwaved tea somewhat unpalatable, but there were probably body parts in the microwave which he didn't really feel like touching at the moment.

He clicked the kettle back on and poured the offending liquid down the sink.

…

Sherlock spent most of the day in bed, only venturing outside briefly to make off with John's laptop, retreating back into his cocoon of bed covers with his treasure, long fingers working out his newly-changed password with his usual smug effortlessness.

The lethargy he had displayed seemed to have eased a little and his pale eyes perused whatever he had managed to hack into with great interest, no doubt he was entertaining himself by making trouble for Mycroft with the way his phone was going off every five seconds in warning. His difficulty breathing however, had descended into deep wet coughs and a runny nose. Which explained why he was still in bed, instead of traipsing around the flat exploding things. John had no idea where he had gotten all of those tissues from, but he now appeared to be lounging in a bed of wilting paper, they were strewn about the covers and floor like flower heads on an altar.

As he watched, Sherlock plucked another from a nearby box and blew his nose once, before scrunching it up in a pale fist and flinging it across the room with abandon. When John expressed his aversion to being pelted with such things, he was promptly told to get the hell out.

At lunchtime, Mrs. Hudson brought up two hot bowls of soup and some thick slices of homemade bread on a tray. The first bowl she left on the kitchen table next to the dilapidated chemistry set for John, and the other she brought into Sherlock's now cave-like bedroom with the resolve to sit there until he ate every last mouthful. She was an exceedingly brave woman.

John opened the door for her, the bottom getting stuck as a few thrown tissues wedged underneath it.

Mrs. Hudson looked rather agitated at the mess, but ignored it in favour of fussing over Sherlock who was sat up in bed with the laptop and glaring at the two of them as if daring them to step further into the room.

She ignored his thunderous expression, smiling gently. "Oh, _Sherlock_. I heard you collapsed!" she admonished, "I didn't know you were so ill, of course John insists that it's just the flu but you never can tell with these things. My sister was diagnosed with a cold last year and it turned out to be full blown pneumonia - you should have said that you were feeling poorly, these things only get worse if you don't treat them." She scrutinised him with wide worried eyes, "You really aren't looking well."

"I didn't collapse." Came the insistent grumble. Sherlock's eyes were more interested in the laptop screen than his intruders; now that it was apparent they weren't leaving and were even attempting to engage him in conversation. "I fell _asleep_."

"It's true, he was snoring." John said, helpfully. "I think he was just too lazy to get into bed himself."

Sherlock's eyes flicked up to John, and narrowed. "I required no assistance."

"Uh. Yes, you did."

"No, I didn't."

"Yes. You _did_."

"You're mistaken, John. As usual."

John folded his arms. "Fine, of course. What the hell would I know? Nothing, obviously. Do you not wonder how you ended up in here, in _bed_, instead of on the floor? Did you think your omnipotent brain had somehow developed unconscious telekinetic powers?"

Sherlock ignored him.

"Oh," said Mr. Hudson, eyes flicking back and forth between the two of them, as if sure she'd stumbled into another of their 'domestics', "well, you should be taking better care of yourself, Sherlock, if you ask me. And stop giving poor John such a hard time of it, he really cares about you you know."

Sherlock didn't deem that worthy of a reply either. His eyes squinted at laptop screen, a small scowl pulling at the corner of his lip.

Mrs. Hudson abruptly remembered why she had braved this dank pit where the irritable beast that was Sherlock Holmes was wallowing in his own grumpiness, "I made you some soup, Sherlock. The one you like, you know, with the butternut squash?"

Sherlock blinked at the screen, eyes reflecting the glow and making them seem almost otherworldly in their defiance. "I'm not hungry."

"Oh, now, don't be like that. I spent a good deal of time making this for you. It'll do you a world of good." She brandished the tray, somehow managing to not spill a drop of the piping hot soup. Obviously she wasn't taking no for an answer. John was once again struck by how brave this wonderful woman was. Amazing. "Well?" she said, coming forward and standing at Sherlock's side brazenly. "_Come on then_."

Sherlock made a grand show of rolling his eyes in annoyance, and then flounced his laptop to the bedside table with his lips pressed together. He folded his long arms, dressing gown whipping around his elbows. Mrs. Hudson set the soup down, gently.

"Here you are love, this'll warm you right up."

Sherlock accepted the tray on his lap with as if it were an inconvenience. Under the watchful glare of Mrs. Hudson, he picked up the spoon and gracelessly shovelled a spoonful of soup into his mouth. He made no indication that he liked it, waving a hand at them, which John took to mean 'stop staring at me' or 'bugger off'. So he did, wanting to eat his own soup, or at least save it from being contaminated by being left on the kitchen table unattended. He gave a small nod to Mrs. Hudson as he went.

She positively beamed at him.

And when she exited the room sometime later, and made her way back downstairs with the tray, John couldn't help noticing that Sherlock's bowl was licked clean.

…

John tried to stay away. He watched the telly. He updated his blog, having stolen back his laptop from Sherlock's ravenous clutches after the soup incident. He read two books from Sherlock's rather extensive and mottled collection. There was one about hand signals which he had traversed mildly over a few biscuits, attempting to bend his fingers into a variety of different shapes and failing, and another thick tome about feet, which he hadn't really read at all, his gaze straying to the closed door next to the bathroom which hadn't opened in hours.

It was a lazy Sunday afternoon but he just couldn't relax. There was something niggling at him. Namely, his idiotic flatmate who couldn't seem to take care of himself.

Normally, he would have ventured outside to the pub with a few friends by now, perhaps called one of the pretty nurses at work and asked her if she fancied a drink, but the weather was horrendous. He was stuck inside unless he desired to be drenched in a matter of seconds and blown bodily into a lamppost. John watched the rain smash against the windows with the ferocity of one of those man-made storms they had in films, like Jurassic Park except with less angry dinosaurs and more angry detectives. He got up, and edged towards the forbidden door.

Okay, just a quick check.

He didn't want Sherlock to think that he was intruding. Which he inevitably would. He just wanted to make sure the idiot didn't need anything.

John opened the door carefully, not wanting to open it too quietly lest Sherlock think he was trying to spy on him, but not wanting the creak to wake him if he was asleep.

The man in question was sat up in bed. His dark hair lay bedraggled on his sweaty feverish brow, and he was propped up against a mountain of pillows, probably fluffed by a certain doting landlady.

He looked terrible.

"John," croaked the phantom pointedly, his sharp eyes spotting him immediately, "You are intruding."

John let himself in, trying to act casually, but aware that he was on some level acting as though Sherlock were now his patient, and he was now checking the pale spectre with the bed sheets drawn up to his chin, with the care of a trained medical professional. _You're his friend, not his doctor, better act like it_. "On what?" he asked, forcing himself to look elsewhere and gesturing loosely with one hand. "On your mound of tissues?"

Sherlock's voice was deep with congestion. "On me. You're intruding on me. My room. My mess. _My_ tissues."

"You know," said John with an amused snort, "if this were anyone else's room, a mound of used tissues would look quite suspicious."

Sherlock just looked at him, uncomprehending.

"It was a joke, Sherlock."

A slow blink. "Mm. Hilarious."

"Are you trying to grow something in here?" John poked the mound of scrunched up _kleenex_ with the toe of his shoe. "Is it going to become sentient and crawl into my room to kill me while I sleep?"

"You've been waiting three hours to check up on me. I wish you'd waited longer, or better yet, left me alone entirely. How did you find the journal on Podiatry, by the way? I expect you barely skimmed it, no doubt your mind was too fuddled with your senseless need to intrude upon me. Get out."

John never would have dared, usually. He knew when to back off, could read the warning signs as clearly as his flatmate could read a man's motive in his choice of socks. Sherlock was giving him the infamous death glare that he usually reserved for when Mycroft was intruding on his personal life, and it was ringing alarm bells in his head. He put his hands up in defence but then decided against it, the hands folded into the creases of his elbows, as he stood his ground. "Make me." He said, eyebrows raising a fraction as if surprised at his own boldness.

"What?" Even Sherlock was surprised, which was certainly something.

"You heard me, Sherlock. You're sick, and whether you like it or not, you need my help. I'm a doctor and I'm not going anywhere, surely you can see the logic in that."

Sherlock just stared at him as though he'd grown an extra head. "There _is_ no logic in that." He said, irritably. "You'll only serve to make yourself ill by hanging around, worrying over the infected." And then he realised what he had just called himself and frowned, irritably written in every groove of his pale face. "Just go away."

"No," said John calmly, "No, I won't. In fact, if I help you to get over this quickly then you probably won't have the chance to infect me, however if you carry on stewing in your own sickly juices –"

Sherlock lips pulled into a grimace, as he mouthed 'sickly juices' to himself as if he couldn't believe John had just said such a vile phrase, especially in relation to him.

"– then you'll mutate this little virus into something much more deadly and contagious. Thus making us both very sick indeed. Call it self-preservation, if you're too cynical to believe that I might care about you a little. So." He cleared his throat. "I'm not leaving."

Sherlock looked a little impressed, before he schooled his features into a look of cool indifference.

"Well," he huffed, croakily, and then refrained from saying anything else, his pale eyes drifting from John's own with an expression of bemused and begrudging acceptance of the doctor's continued presence. As if John was nothing but a passing annoyance, a bumbling mayfly that was not worth the effort of trying to swat away.

"Well," echoed John.

"I want tea." Sherlock snapped as haughtily as he could through a barrage of coughs, flouncing back in bed and flinging the covers over his head with no small amount of scorn.

John got the distinct impression that he was going to regret this. He could see his job description shifting slyly from 'doctor' to 'nursemaid' and suddenly understood exactly what Mrs Hudson was always going on about when she curtly stressed that she was _not their Housekeeper._

Nevertheless he went and put the kettle on, wondering why on earth he put up with it all. And then realising exactly why and getting annoyed at himself, hurling a couple of tea bags into the waiting mugs with a little more force than necessary.

…

The next morning, John was struck with a problem.

He knocked hesitantly on Sherlock's door and let himself in when there was no answer. Normally, he wouldn't dare encroach on the detective's inner sanctum in the early hours of the morning, because although it was relatively experiment and booby-trap free, which was more than he could say about the rest of the flat, Sherlock was distinctly private and territorial about where he slept.

When he was awake, John's company was tolerable, when he was asleep, it was abhorred.

This was _his_ room, the one place where he was at his most vulnerable. Of course, with Sherlock as sick as he was, John was allowed rare access, if only because the detective couldn't exactly fend him off anymore, and truth be told, he was worried. Always bloody worried.

Knowing Sherlock, the insufferable man could have slept with the windows open all night, breathing in the frosty air and developing a severe chest infection. Or he could have accidentally smothered himself with his own pillow. Or gotten up in the middle of the night with the casual moronic intention of playing with dangerous volatile chemicals and setting the flat on fire, and then he could have tripped over his stupidly long feet and smacked his head on the bedside table and knocked himself out, and could be lying in there right now with a possible concussion. Or he could be dead.

Yes, John worried. A lot. He knew it was stupid. But when there was clear evidence that his flatmate was unwell, he honestly didn't care, so he allowed himself into Sherlock's room again hoping he would be forgiven.

He found Sherlock snoring lightly, one of his long legs hanging idly off the edge of the bed with the slender foot exposed to the open air. He had the ridiculous urge to tickle it, as he would have done to his sister Harry when they were kids. He rather thought that Sherlock would kick him in the face if he ever tried such a thing, so he cleared his throat instead.

"Sherlock?" He said, loud enough to stir the sleeping detective but not harsh enough to warrant a broken nose via flailing limb.

"Mffgh." Said Sherlock. One of his pale blue eyes opened and closed. He frowned. A long arm came up to cover his eyes. The lips beneath it pulled in distaste. "Go 'way." He managed. It seemed to be fast becoming his catchphrase.

"Sorry." Said John, because he couldn't think of anything else to say. "How are you feeling?"

Sherlock was rarely ineloquent, even when he was sick and had just woken up. His voice was hoarse, but it didn't look like he was going to let that stop him from telling John to bloody well leave him be and back the hell off. "I am not a child." He rumbled. "Stop talking to me in that simpering tone reserved for sniffling infants and the near-dead."

John tried not to be offended at the obvious snide evaluation of his bedside manner. "I was just trying to be nice."

Sherlock squinted his eyes. The look could have skewered a teddy bear at thirty paces. "Well stop it." He groused. "It's sickening. It might work on your grovelling patients, but it won't work on me. And you can stop looking at me as though I'm going to keel over and die."

"But –"

"Oh, why can't you ever just be direct? _Ask_, already. Your intentions are blindingly apparent. You wouldn't dare come in here in the morning for any other reason. I can hear your ridiculous thoughts from here. The answer is no."

"What?"

"No," repeated Sherlock, breathlessly. He removed his arm to better stare at his flatmate with those pale startlingly perceptive eyes of his, "You shouldn't call work and lie to them in order to stay home with me. I won't appreciate it, I don't need it, and I will, if given the opportunity, drive you completely insane. I have methods, Mycroft can testify."

If Sherlock thought he could get John to leave by threatening to drive him mad, then the detective had honestly underestimated himself for once. John hadn't been sane since the day they had met.

"Go to work, John."

John nodded distractedly, feeling thoroughly berated, and knowing that Sherlock was most likely right. He didn't seem to be getting any worse. His fever was down, and the now cold half-full mug on the bedside table meant he had been well enough to get up and make himself a cup of tea sometime in the night. John obediently went to get ready, knowing that his day could be better served by helping people who actually wanted to be helped. Sherlock was a grown man; he could take care of himself. Probably.

A few minutes later, he poked his head into Sherlock's room, working his arms into his jacket as he did so.

The detective was in much the same position as he had been in ten minutes ago, except this time his foot was back inside the covers where it was, no doubt, warmer.

"You going to be all right?" John asked, knowing the question would not be a welcome one but feeling that he should ask anyway, "I left some orange juice in the fridge, and Mrs Hudson's left some of that soup, it's in the Tupperware container behind the tongues. And you can call me anytime -"

"_John_."

"Right. Right, you already knew that. I'll be home at five -"

Sherlock threw a pillow at him. It hit him straight in the face and then fell to the floor with a soft _flump_. He blinked in surprise and then frowned.

"Well if you're feeling well enough to throw things like a child, then I'm sure you'll be fine." John huffed, picking up the pillow and throwing it back at Sherlock, noting with some satisfaction that the detective almost missed it in his drowsy state, but managed to catch the tail end of it with shaking fingers before it hit him in the side of the cranium.

"Get well soon." John said.

Sherlock lodged the pillow back behind his head, spouting angrily, "Oh, do shut up John! Just. _Get. Out_."

John nodded, "Okay." He said quietly, "Okay." He gave Sherlock one last look before closing the door with a small snap.

…

…

_Please review, you lovely person you. _


	3. Chapter 3: The Meddling of Mycroft

_This is a tad more humorous than the last chapters; I really enjoyed writing an irritable Sherlock! There's even a case is in this one, too, sort of. There will be more hurt/comfort later, I promise. Thank you for the reviews, they made me smile. Please, please leave a comment after reading, they really do help me to update quicker ;) _

_Also, if you find the time, vote on the poll on my profile page, I need some direction to help me write more Sherlock stories for you lovely people. Shall I even continue this one?_

…

_Chapter 3: The Meddling of Mycroft Holmes. _

…

…

John returned from work to find the house in a state.

Chairs overturned, papers fluttering in the breeze from an open window, a few undistinguishable stains on the carpet and one of the sofa cushions hanging eerily from the lampshade, strung up by a hangman's noose fashioned from one of John's 'special occasion' ties that Sherlock wasn't supposed to use in experiments anymore since the good doctor was fast running out of things to wear to weddings.

The damned man had lit one on fire last week because he'd been too bored to get up and turn the light on, and had decided to set light to the pilfered silk tie on the gas stove, and proceed to read a book by its flickering smoky firelight, setting off the fire alarm with its noxious fumes and waking up poor Mrs. Hudson with the racket. He had used another one to secure various limbs to their dining room table. And a further tie was still salvageable, if John ever wanted to fish it out from the bottom of a jar of hungry leeches in the lower drawer of the fridge.

Finding their flat in such a state was, actually, somewhat of a relief; it meant that Sherlock had been doing what he usually did when alone and not preoccupied with a case. Namely, destroying the place in the name of science. And sometimes just because he found the world particularly dull.

"So, anything interesting happen while I was out?" John remarked casually, eyeing several bullet holes in the wall and wondering if they had been there this morning.

Sherlock widened his eyes and relaxed his features, the epitome of innocence. It confirmed John's suspicions immediately. "Nothing." The sickly detective said smoothly.

John made the face that he knew he always made when he was being lied to, but didn't really want to find out the truth. It involved his eyebrows creasing and his mouth pouting, and Sherlock always made fun of it. He sighed a bit. And then decided that he really didn't want to know. "Hmm." He said, to let Sherlock know that he hadn't been fooled. He needn't have bothered, he was John Watson, and Sherlock never could fool him properly. "Tea?" he offered, putting his work bag down and taking off his jacket with a small sigh.

A smile that spread across the detective's pale face like jam across toast. "Wonderful." Said Sherlock, a little stiffly. "I was just going to suggest that you make one, it is tradition after all, when we have a new case."

John blinked. "A new… case..? But you're _sick_, you can't go off gallivanting around the place chasing suspects! Just yesterday you were hugging a hot water bottle like a bloody teddy bear, and you haven't been able to keep anything down for three days. You're malnourished, feverish and probably delusional."

"John."

"No, Sherlock. _No_."

"_John_."

"I'm not letting you. The only way for you to get better is bed rest and medication."

"Oh shut _up_! You are not, despite what your incessant worrying and pandering indicate, my mother." Sherlock snapped. "I am better. Never _been_ better. I feel fine. Fantastic, in fact. And even if I didn't it would be none of your business."

"Well, I think you're delirious," noted John, and there was some truth in it. Sherlock's eyes were fever-bright. "And it is my business. You're my friend. You can solve the case in the comfort and relative safety of this flat, but you are not going anywhere. I'll sit on you if I have to."

Sherlock looked a little put out by the thought of John sitting on him. "I have to go to the crime scene. It's vital that I see the evidence with my own eyes, there's no telling what those idiots missed. They see everything but they never observe."

John rolled his eyes at the familiar criticism. "Leave Scotland yard to handle it. They're not as stupid as you always tell them they are, you know."

"They _are_ stupid. Incredibly. But this case isn't from Scotland Yard, it's from my brother."

Now that one was a surprise. "_Mycroft_ asked you?" he spluttered.

"Do I have another brother?"

"No, I mean - what? And you _accepted_ it? But," John widened his eyes in mystification, taking in the dishevelled detective slumped in his dressing gown with his hair wild and tousled from sleep. He looked sick. It was evident. The bloody man was sitting like a poorly child, with his knees drawn up, when he would usually be pacing the floor in excitement, the adrenaline of a new case sparking through his brain and into his long limbs, demanding movement, demanding action. Mycroft would have seen that, would have read it as easily as he read the morning paper, with his lips downturned in mild annoyance at the mind-numbing obviousness. Why on earth would he be giving Sherlock a case when he could see that his little brother was – John pinched the bridge of his nose to dissipate his growing frustration. He would never understand the Holmes brothers. "Couldn't he see how _sick_ you are?" he finished, somewhat lamely.

"Oh, quite." Sherlock waved a flippant hand. "He refused to occupy the same room as me before I put this on." Here, he gestured to a small medical mask on the tabletop,

"It did little to stop the contagion, I'm afraid. Dear Mycroft'll be sick within the next few hours, hopefully."

"How can you tell?"

"I'll spare you the details, John, you don't want to know. Oh, and don't touch the petri dish in the bath. It's… objectionable."

John raised an eyebrow; the thought of the unpleasant cultures that Sherlock could have grown was disturbing to say the least. "Yeah, you're right, I _don't_ want to know. Just chuck it out the next time you're in there, okay? I don't fancy contracting anything."

"I can't just throw it out; it's a part of me. It's interesting."

John looked at him, effortlessly diagnosing the fever, cough, paleness, breathing difficulties of influenza. Sherlock was still ill, though he seemed to have moved on from lethargic grumpiness to an antsy feverish need for action. For Sherlock to even consider taking on a case from his brother, let alone be biting at the bit, spoke much about his current state.

Sherlock got up then, making for his room with quick steps that had him almost teetering at some points along his journey. "I'm going to get dressed. I rarely point out the apparent, but you seem to be thinking rather deeply, and it does slow you down seeing as you're so unused to using your brain. If you wish to accompany me, I wouldn't be averse to it."

He guessed that was Sherlock's attempt at a compromise, or perhaps... John pressed his lips together. "You waited for me." He stated.

"Hmm?" It sounded like a question, but the detective himself seemed uninterested. His back was turned as he retreated in a weaving beeline to his room.

"You would already be there, at the crime scene, if you could make it there yourself. You waited for me to get home from work." John realised. "Sherlock…"

"Put your jacket back on, John." Came the response, before Sherlock's bedroom door slammed and the sounds of his wardrobe door and drawers opening could be heard.

John sighed, and put his jacket on.

…

The journey to the crime scene was uneventful. Sherlock was huddled in his coat, and shivering. John valiantly tried not to feel sorry for the stupid bugger, because it was the detective's own bloody fault that he was gallivanting around London in the late biting cold afternoon and not tucked up in bed. They both failed at covering up their weaknesses, but fortunately they both decided to pointedly ignore each other.

They were greeted at the door of number 27 Black Prince road by a Detective Chief Inspector with a forced smile and a mismatched hairpiece.

"You must be Sherlock Holmes." He said, his smile shrinking slightly as the skinny sickly detective swayed vicariously on his feet and rolled his eyes. Sherlock certainly didn't look his usual imposing towering self. He looked rather like a scowling teenager. "I'm DCI Ron Greenodd, a pleasure to meet you." DCI Ron Grenodd sounded like it was anything but, it was quite obvious that he wasn't exactly happy to have a consulting detective on his crime scene, but no doubt the insistence of a certain meddling Mycroft Holmes left the poor man with no choice in the matter.

It paid to have brothers in high places.

The DCI lifted the crime scene tape with a slightly pudgy hand, told them the vague details of the murder, which Sherlock promptly ignored, coughing into his fist loudly over the top of the older man's deductions and curtailing the his explanation before the end with a "Yes, thank you for filling my mind with that utter drivel. Can we go inside now or do you wish to keep inflicting your idiotic inferences on us?" and then they were begrudgingly let over the threshold.

"The body is in the morgue, the late Mr. James Friar that is," explained DCI Greenodd, "We can take you there later if you require to see it in person, the post-mortem hasn't been carried out yet."

Sherlock merely grunted.

It was a typical old London house with renovated interior, not unlike their own flat, though with considerably less body parts and the designer wallpaper was distinctly lacking in bullet-riddled yellow smiley faces. It was actually quite nice, thought John. If a little modern for his tastes, a lot of chic items in lieu of comforting ones. The painting on the wall was a fashionable print instead of a familial photograph; the phone table was flat-pack and made to look old-fashioned.

Sherlock paused at the elegant coat rack, plucking out the pockets of a few jackets and staring at them intently for a few moments.

"Where is the wife?" he said abruptly.

The DCI raised his eyebrows, and John couldn't help but notice that they clashed with the odd brown colour of his 'hair'. "She's upstairs with Constable Jenkins. Third door on the right." He put his hands behind his back, mouth forming a grim line. "I'll be outside if you need me, I have a few calls to make." John got the impression that the DCI just didn't want to be in the same building as a certain pale-faced detective. He couldn't say he blamed him. Sherlock was doing his best impression of a disgruntled hedgehog; anyone who got to close to him was likely to get impaled.

Sherlock took the stairs three at a time, and was gone in a whirl of dark coat fabric. By the time John had reached the landing, the detective had already opened the third door on the right and was interrogating the lady inside. A young constable in a pristine uniform, with a walkie-talkie strapped to her police-issue belt, raised her eyebrows at John as she stood outside the door, obviously having been asked none too politely to leave the room.

"Sorry about him." John said breathlessly to the policewoman.

"It's all right," she said softly, mouth quirking at the corners, "I've already been warned."

John gave her a small apologetic smile before entering the bedroom. He always found himself apologising for Sherlock's brash behaviour, he didn't know whether that was because he felt somewhat responsible for the mad genius, or whether he just felt like he should try and make the people who were exposed to his jibes more comfortable because he was just a generally decent sort and felt a bit sorry for them.

Sherlock was standing next to a young woman of perhaps thirty years old. The aforementioned wife, no doubt. She was brown haired, brown eyed, and seemed to have been crying quite recently, if her eyes, pink nose and the soggy tissue in her hand were anything to go by.

John hoped she was crying _before_ Sherlock had walked in, because the detective had a record of upsetting people within the first few seconds of meeting them. John remembered how he had reduced one of the cashiers at _Tesco_ to tears with a few pointed words about her fake tan lines. John had just wanted to pop in and pick up some milk on the way home from a gruelling case, have a nice cup of tea, and go to bed, but instead he ended up letting the poor woman wail into his shirt, steadily turning it orange with her aforementioned fake tan, as he attempted to comfort her while his flatmate continued his tirade about not wanting to accompany him to this humdrum supermarket in the first place, with its mediocre workers who wore copious amounts of cosmetics to make themselves feel better about the fact that they had no qualifications to speak of and no career prospects beyond stacking tins of beans and mopping up isle spillages and could they _'please go home now John before my brain rots entirely!'_

The man really was a menace to society. He should never be left alone with a witness, let alone one of the victim's family members lest they dissolve into a weeping mess or deservedly punch the idiot in the face.  
Sherlock _was_ getting better at dealing with people, slowly. Sort of, when he really tried. Or when John was there to remind him. And so, John resolved that he would always be there to remind him.

"- Mr. James Friar, government official. You say he was dead in bed when you awoke in the morning." Sherlock was saying, brusquely. "What were you wearing?"

The woman's lip trembled, brown eyes opening wider in confusion. "Excuse me?"

"What you wearing the night your husband was brutally murdered by means of poisoning. You went to dinner, Alejandro's, a nearby Italian restaurant. What did you wear? It's a _simple_ question."

"P-poisoning?"

"_Sherlock_." John warned. The woman's eyes were getting steadily more red and puffy, a clear indication that she was probably going to start crying again, she'd just lost her husband for Christ's sake, and his sociopathic flatmate flinging round the death of said husband in such blatant terms was really not helping matters. He sometimes wished that Sherlock could step into another person's shoes for once, and be on the receiving end of one his cold deductions. Maybe then he'd understand why other people always resented him. But then this _was_ Sherlock, and the man would probably love to be spoken to with such detachment. He so despised unnecessary sentimental conversation.

"Sorry." Sherlock grumbled under John's persuading gaze. Well, that was something at least. John cheered inside at the tiny victory. Even if Sherlock didn't mean it, he had still said it. And the bloody man rarely said anything if he didn't have some inclination to do so. John was his inclination. "Go on. It's quite important. What were you wearing that night?"

The wife wiped her eyes. "Oh, uh, it was… a little black dress. It's in the wardrobe. What do you mean he was _poisoned_?"

Sherlock's long fingers were already pulling the fake-oaken door open - everything in the bedroom looked like it had been handpicked from ikea - his hands were deft as he rummaged through the clothes, and plucked out a black dress from around four others. "This one?" He snapped without looking at her, narrowed pale eyes already raking the dark fabric, and holding the hanger out to watch the swish of the hem.

"Yes, how did you..?"

"Shoes." Said Sherlock abruptly, shoving the dress back into its place with a small clink as the wire hanger attached to the rail.

"What?"

"Which _shoes_?" he had his back to her, but John could tell that his face would be scrunched up with that frustrated expression he had when he believed people were being overwhelmingly stupid just to annoy him.

"The red heels."

"And I assume you had a matching clutch?"

John raised an eyebrow. What was he, a bloody _fashionista_ now? He'd obviously been watching too much crap telly, it seemed to be having an effect on him. John made a mental note to get Sherlock out of the flat more often lest the obsessive idiot become even more engrossed in daytime rubbish.

"The red one, the uh - _dolcci_." Sniffed the woman. "Sorry, but is this important? I don't understand. You _are_ looking for the killer aren't you?"

"Hmm." Sherlock knelt and stuck his nose in the shoes. John didn't know why, because he obviously couldn't smell a damn thing or he would have recoiled instantly at the heavy stench of perfume when he'd walked in here. Just for show then, or he actually had to physically stick his nose into the evidence to get any kind of smell out if it. Conclusion, Sherlock was sicker that he was letting on.

John smiled gently at the grieving woman, "We're doing all we can, Mrs. Friar. It might seem unorthodox, but his methods really do work."

Sherlock picked up the aforementioned garish handbag, stringing it onto his arm for a second. He seemed to be doing his best to negate John's words about his methods, and looked very much like an imbecile swinging a red handbag about. John nearly put his head in his hands, his smile tightening on his face as he shot Sherlock a look. Sherlock, as usual, ignored him, opening the bag's metal clasp, peering inside and sniffing deeply, poking his slender hand into the lining for a moment, and then closing it with a small click.

"Fascinating." He said.

And then he got up, thrusting the handbag back into the wardrobe none too gently, slamming the door, turning on his heel and marching from the room.

"Anything you can tell us about your husband's eating habits?" The deranged detective called as he descended the stairs with relish, long tapered shoes tapping against the wooden staircase in staccato. John shared a look with the befuddled woman before they both followed Sherlock down the steps and found him in the kitchen, sticking his curly head into the cabinets.

Mrs. Friar sat down in a chair at the small table, heavily. She looked as though she might start weeping again. Sherlock spared her a disdainful glance. Before turning his attention to the fridge and fingering the vegetables.

"Did he have any peculiar tastes?" Sherlock said into the carrots.

"David? Uh, no," she managed, accepting the tissue that John offered with a wet trembling smile, "not really, I mean, he wasn't a picky eater if he could stomach my cooking. Just normal stuff, nothing too spicy."

Sherlock slammed the fridge door. Both John and Mrs. Friar jumped at the harsh sound. "Odd that you don't mention how he prefers savoury foods. The cupboards are full of crisps, marmite, twiglets." Sherlock raised his eyebrows and then a scowl wormed its way onto his face and he visibly slouched, a pale hand coming up to his head in dismay. "Oh no. How could I have been so _stupid_?" he growled at himself.

John blinked. "What? The case – you've solved it?"

"Not that!" Sherlock huffed indignantly, hands in his hair. "Idiot!" He strode out of the kitchen towards the front door, flinging it open with reckless abandon and startling the Detective Chief Inspector behind it so much that the poor man nearly leapt out of his toupee.

"The wife." Sherlock said to him distractedly as he tried to elbow his way past the man without actually touching him. "Arrest her immediately."

"What? Why?"

"Because she _murdered_ her husband. He was clearly sleeping with her sister. Are you really that stupid?" He rolled his eyes, looking like he didn't have time to explain this to someone so idiotic. Cue the usual cold rant of deductions, without pause for breath. "Victim likes savoury foods, unlike his wife who has clear stains from smuggled chocolate bars on the inside of her coat pockets, not her taste, but her husband's then - clear from the cupboards and half empty salt dispenser on the dining room table, and we can deduce he is in the habit of putting salt on his food, even at restaurants. She failed to mention it - rather _incriminating_, don't you think? He even takes blood pressure tablets to deal with the strain the excess sodium puts on his heart, so _why_ didn't she _mention_ it?"

"I'm sorry - What?" spluttered the detective.

Sherlock let out a barely contained growl of exasperation, "The _salt_, Inspector, you can't be that _moronic_, surely you _noticed_. The wife's handbag was larger on that night than appropriate for a small evening meal - she isn't going to lug make up around, doesn't wear much judging by the state of her dresser, her husband is paying due to his guilty conscience, so no space needed for money – conclusion, it was for something else, something bulky. A salt shaker filled with cyanide crystals, easily mistaken for sodium chloride, common table salt, easy to obtain from the internet, which she switched at the scene after plying her husband with drinks until he left for the toilet. Clever, as the acidity of the wine she chose increases the acidity of the stomach causing the cyanide to act quickly and negating the effects of a full stomach on the poison's success rate. The victim effectively poisoned himself. He's a portly man, not a scrap of dinner was left and any evidence on the plate was washed clean immediately by the industrial dishwasher in the kitchen. Check everywhere for a salt shaker, identical to the ones found at _Alejandro's; _I recommend the neighbour's bins, the wife's smart, but not _too_ smart. Didn't find out he had been cheating on her until a few days ago, despite the affair lasting approximately eight months from the glaringly damning fibres on the bedspread, and the sister's lipstick smear on his coat."

Sherlock almost looked physically in pain as he clenched his eyes shut and grimaced.

"Cyanide is so _obvious_."

And with that he launched himself down the steps and hailed a cab with a wave of his pale hand.

John followed him with a softly muttered apology about his colleague's theatrics, and the Detective Inspector merely blinked at him, trying to come out of his stupor. Sherlock often had that affect on people, hopefully it would wear off quickly and the wife would be arrested before she could leg it. John sighed.

They got in the back seat of the taxi, and Sherlock looked positively furious.

John put his seat belt on automatically, and then studied the man beside him, who looked paler and more hunched than he had at the crime scene. It had been a display then, nothing but a piece of Sherlock's infamous acting, he had suspected as much. Sherlock was no better than he had been this morning, and if anything looked a little worse for wear. There were dark smudges under his eyes that weren't present before, and his pale eyes were burning with anger and what he suspected to be a high fever.

He never should have let the idiot out of the flat. But he had been relieved to see him act more like himself. "Uh, Sherlock – what's going on?"

Sherlock growled, buried himself deeper into the folds of his greatcoat and steadfastly avoided John's gaze. His eyes burned a hole through the car window. "My interfering ignoramus of a brother." The sulking detective finally spat, lips pulled in annoyance.

John frowned a little, not understanding fully. "He wasn't to know you'd find the case boring, Sherlock. You seemed to be enjoying yourself for a bit…"

Sherlock rolled his eyes, and John trailed off as he was fixed with that blunt icy stare. "This wasn't a case at all! _Cyanide_," he huffed indignantly, lips curling in disdain, "It was so mind-numbingly apparent, even that half-wit Inspector could have deduced it! No. Mycroft solved this case hours ago, John. His idea of a _joke_. He just wanted me out of the flat."

"Wait," a familiar feeling of displeasure bubbled up in John's chest, "he made you get out of the flat for nothing, when you were _sick_ -"

"_Because_ I was sick, John."

John blinked in confusion, and then his mouth formed a little 'o'.

And Sherlock thunked his head against the window with a scowl.

When they got back to the flat, Sherlock headed straight to his room and slammed the door so loudly that Mrs. Hudson came running up the stairs to see if a bomb had gone off.

He could be heard flinging things around inside, a few muffled thumps, and even the scraping sound of moving furniture across floorboards sounded from within, but John thought it best to leave him to it. He had gotten annoyed when John had messed up his sock index by accident, there was no telling what foul mood he had descended into now that Mycroft had entered his sanctuary.

John occupied himself by admiring his living accommodations, which is really saying something, considering that where he lived usually looked as though a rhino had recently exploded in it.

The flat was… well, it was fantastic.

Mycroft really knew how to invade someone's flat. Everything was so _tidy_; the lounge uncluttered, the window's sparkling, the mound of semi-sentient tissues had been disposed of. In the kitchen, the surfaces were bare, the chemistry set had been painstakingly moved from the table to the counter, unsoiled and looking like new, with no traces of dangerous chemicals, bodily fluids or blancmange still lingering in the test tubes and round bellied beakers. A large bouquet of elderflowers adorned the table with a small handwritten card perched in the small white blooms.

_I thought at least you could experiment with something potentially beneficial - M_

John had no idea what that meant, but no doubt Sherlock would find it utterly aggravating; if he even looked at the card, or even the flowers themselves, before chucking them down the waste disposal.

One cupboard was crammed full of everything from Olbas oil to strip thermometers, decongestant tablets, soothing lozenges and expectorants. Must have cost a fortune. He poked his head into the bathroom and was nearly blinded by the expanse of white. There was a hygienic smell of bleach and bergamot, an array of hand soaps, shampoos and fragrant body washes. Not a toe to be found in the toothbrush holder, or human tooth lodged into the bar of soap, or animal blood smeared on the tiles in different sized handprints, or dead houseflies floating in half-empty conditioner bottles. In a word, it was bliss. As though he had just walked into a fancy hotel suite with all the trimmings.

Looking around the flat, John was coming to the shocking conclusion that Mycroft Holmes was cleverer than Sherlock gave him credit for. Oh, he knew that Sherlock wouldn't appreciate it, would do his best to get the flat back to the sickly dank hovel that it was mere hours before, might even explode the new medication cupboard if he felt up to it. But try as he might, Sherlock wouldn't manage to get rid of _everything_, something helpful would slip through the cracks. And John guessed that was the point. Mycroft was actually, truly, concerned out his brother's health and had gone to lengthy measures to try and assist him. Well, whether he was actually doing this to help was another matter, he could be asserting his superiority, or pointing out the fact that Sherlock couldn't look after himself so he had to step in, and really only wanted to annoy his little brother further.

John wasn't sure which of these was the case, but he enjoyed having a fully stocked fridge.

Fully stocked with _food_, of all the glorious things! Instead of numerous jars holding the contents of a long dead victim's stomach, or an assortment of tongues, belly button fluff and dismembered body parts, there was gold-top milk, fresh orange juice, a joint of honey roast ham, sundried tomatoes, brightly coloured organic vegetables, a pot of something that smelled like beef casserole, and even a bottle or two of red wine. John raised his eyebrows at it all. Good lord, there was a cheeseboard in here. A bloody cheeseboard. And the stilton was blue because it was supposed to be blue, and not because Sherlock had made it so, either by neglect or experimentation.

John thought that perhaps he had stepped into an alternate universe for a moment, and he decided that rather than question this delightful occurrence, he would just enjoy it.

He took out the cheeseboard and put it on the miraculously clean tabletop. Put the kettle on. Pulled out a crisp new packet of crackers and a clean, dry plate from the cupboard which housed them all. Another miracle. All of the plates were in the cupboard, clean and dry. With no mildew adorning them, no odd stains. And they were all in the same place, rather than suckered to the ceiling like an upended jellyfish, or smashed in the fireplace, or suspended over a Bunsen burner and steadily blackening with soot.

It was all very odd. And nice. Very nice indeed.

John was almost too scared to sit down and eat the treasure he'd found. Maybe Sherlock was playing a practical joke on him, and Mycroft hadn't cleaned their flat at all or bought them a month's supply of shopping, and this was all an incredible farce constructed so that John would eat the cheese, which was actually a horrific experiment of some kind, and John would lose an entire week from his memory and not even notice. He looked at the cheese questioningly, and decided, as he usually did in this flat, that he would just have to chance it and deal with the consequences later.

The stilton turned out to be delicious and he relished it while he could. Which, as it happened, didn't turn out to be very long at all.

Sherlock emerged from his room, like a man on a mission, with a black bin liner clenched firmly in his pale fist. It was already half full, no doubt stuffed with Mycroft's offerings that Sherlock had turned his nose up at in his bedroom. The detective marched straight to a cupboard and threw open the door, causing it to thwack against the cabinet beside it and dent the wood there. He glared at the inside with vehemence. His white fingers snatched out packets of expensive biscuits and Italian pasta and hurled them aggressively into the waiting bag, some of the items falling to the floor and rolling under the table in his haste to get rid of them.

John abandoned his crackers immediately, intent on saving this newfound universe from the destructive ministrations of his deranged flatmate.

"What the hell are you _doing_?" He took Sherlock by the shoulders and spun him around. The man looked incensed. His hair was wild and his forehead sweaty. His pale eyes were positively aflame.

"I am removing every last piece of vile, unwanted, imposing 'aid' courtesy of my meddling brother!" he ranted, as if it was obvious. And then he attempted to resume his task with renewed vigour.

John took a hold of the bulging bin liner to halt him. Sherlock narrowed his eyes; a sniper that had him in his sights.

"Let _go_, John."

"Give me the bag, Sherlock. Stop throwing everything out!"

"No!"

"Sherlock -"

"I don't need any of this superfluous _twaddle_! He needs to learn to leave me alone –and get out of my personal space! He has no right to trespass on my flat and interfere with – with _everything_! Have you seen what he's done to my _room,_ John – my _room_ for God's sake! Is nothing sacred? Experiments ruined – sock index reorganised – and the _pillows_ – don't even get me started on the damned _pillows_! He is the _devil_, John! Nothing short of Lucifer himself! How _dare_ he -"

"He cares about you. I know he doesn't always go about it the right way, but he's trying."

An irritated, firey snort. "He wants to _control_ me! He _hates_ me! He _ruins everything_!"

"Give me the bag."

"I don't want it, John. Any of it!"

"Well, I _do_! Now give me the bag and stop being such a child." He tugged on the bin liner and Sherlock tugged back.

"Let _go, _John! I'm going to set all of it on fire and WATCH IT BURN!"

"Sherlock, be reasonable."

"I AM REASONABLE!"

"No you're not - you're bloody _insane_! And you're sick, Sherlock, all this ranting and raving isn't doing you any favours - you need all the help you can get, why do you have to be so blind to your own brother's blatant worry for you -"

"HE ISN'T MY BROTHER, JOHN! HE'S _SATAN_!"

The plastic threatened to split. John had two hands on the bag now, and from the trembling of Sherlock's sweaty fingertips, he could tell that he was probably going to win this tug-of-war between them. "He's only trying to help you. Now give me the bloody bag!" John said.

Sherlock bristled, white hot rage evident on his pale face, his eyes flicked to the small cheese platter John had prepared for himself that lay half-eaten on the spotless tabletop next to the vase of elderflowers.

He looked back to John with a look so cold John felt himself shiver under the intensity of it. He found himself vaguely wondering whether the skin of his face was now covered in snaking frost.

"He's going to make you as fat as he is!" Sherlock snapped, voice low and dangerous as he thrust the bag into John's chest and strode out of the room with his coat flapping around his ankles.

John fully expected the resulting slam of Sherlock's bedroom door, but the deafening sound of it still made him wince.

Mrs. Hudson peeked her head into the kitchen.

"Is everything all right, love? He's not being a pain again is he -?" she stopped and then her eyes grew round with awe as she took in the small space. He didn't blame her, the kitchen had never looked this clean in all the time he had occupied the place. "Oh, good gracious – you boys really did clean up! I thought the lounge was looking different, but this is, well," she put a hand to her chest, looking touched at the effort, "it's _marvellous_. How ever did you manage it? I was here just this morning and the smell was so bad, I thought something had crawled up the stairs and died in here."

John smiled, wondering whether he should allow Mycroft take the credit for this one. But the soft, fond and rather ridiculously happy smile on his landlady's face made that thought fly abruptly out of the window. "Would you like to have tea with me?" John said instead.

"Tea?" said Mrs. Hudson, her face brightening at the idea of having tea in the spotless kitchen, without the threat of finding a stray eyeball in her cup. John couldn't remember the last time he had offered her a cup of tea - it was always the other way around, despite her insistence that she was most definitely not their housekeeper, she was constantly acting like it. Constantly supplying soup, tea, biscuits, and cake. Time to repay her a little, John thought. "That would be lovely, thank you, John."

He grinned, opening the black bag that Sherlock had thrust half the cupboard contents into and poking around inside. "Biscuits? Garibaldi or bourbons? Oh, there's some Scottish shortbread in here shaped like little terriers…"

"Ooh," She said, accepting the proffered biscuits, with a warm smile. "I feel like a queen."

"Well, enjoy it while you can. Sherlock's on the warpath, no doubt most of this will be in the bin, or burnt to a crisp in a mysterious fire by the morning..."

Mrs. Hudson seemed to understand immediately, she nibbled the head off the Scottish terrier with an amused glint in her eye. "You can hide some of it in my flat if you like, even Sherlock wouldn't dare throw it out of there. Not if he knows what's good for him."

John grinned, imagining the outrage on Sherlock's face at the idea that his brother's gifts were beyond his jurisdiction to chuck away, somewhere that he couldn't get to without facing the wrath and disappointment of their beloved landlady. Despite his bluntness with Mrs. Hudson, he held her in high regard, and wouldn't dare pilfer things out of her cupboards no matter how much he hated Mycroft's meddling.

John took a large gulp of his tea, and balanced a piece of crumbling wensleydale on a M&S poppy cracker. "You are brilliant." He marvelled at her, in much the same way he often marvelled at Sherlock.

A lot of people were cleverer than Sherlock gave them credit for. John was beginning to realise the full extent of the devious lengths they would take to look after the bugger, and if Sherlock chose to see it all as an invasion of his privacy than so be it, but he was bloody well getting the help despite him neither wanting nor appreciating it.

…

…

_I hope you enjoyed this chapter; the review box is down there and to your right :) - HCP_


	4. Chapter 4: Restless and Ruffled

_To those who read or commented on or favourited the last chapter, you have my heartfelt thanks! I love you. I hope you all enjoy this chapter :)_

…

_Chapter 4: Restless and Ruffled _

…

…

The cleanliness of the flat lasted approximately three hours, before the manic maelstrom, that was the sickly Sherlock Holmes, blew through the rooms on a rampage that left nothing but chaos in its wake. John had managed to save a few items, mostly medical supplies and a few biscuits, and had hidden them in Mrs. Hudson's cabinets downstairs.

Everything else had been laid waste.

The kitchen was already full of experiments again, and Sherlock had taken great pleasure in finding the items of food that John had been looking forward to consuming the most, and promptly ruining them. In ridiculously petty ways. The remnants of the cheeseboard for example, had been replaced with congealed body fat, earwax and some unidentifiable yellow gunk that John thought had probably once resided inside a body as well but he had no desire to work out what exactly it was.

It jiggled.

The shortbread had been filled with ants. The stew had been poured down the sink and had clogged up the plughole and pipe below it. And John had taken a tentative bite of a pink lady apple and found the inside to have been hollowed out and stuffed with one of his only remaining neck ties. He pulled it out of the hole he had just bitten and held it in his palm forlornly; it was covered in pieces of brown apple and damp with juice. Just, why..?

_Why_?

Why on earth did he have to live with such a bloody annoying _maniac_?

It wasn't John's fault that Mycroft had invaded their flat and cleaned it and filled it with food, but seeing as he was the one in closest proximity, he was the one who had to deal with the irritable detective's retaliation. The only thing that made this slightly better was the knowledge that Mycroft was also dealing with the backlash from his little stint, as Sherlock had kidnapped John's laptop again and been chuckling to himself darkly from the confines of the pillow fort in his bedroom.

The British government was probably on red alert right now, and Mycroft pulling out whatever hair he had left thanks to his brother's online acts of juvenile vengeance.

Sherlock's tomfoolery had eventually petered off though; the man must be feeling sick again. John almost felt glad, and then the doctor and friend in him immediately felt terrible for even thinking such a thing. Though he had to admit, he much preferred slightly submissive sleepy Sherlock to rambunctious cunning manic Sherlock.

John looked about the kitchen and pondered for a moment where all of these miscellaneous body parts had come from, Mrs. Hudson would not be pleased to see the flat filled with its usual gruesome artefacts, she had so enjoyed having afternoon tea at the clean table.

No doubt Molly had been called in immediately to deliver all of these organs and dismembered fingers, he knew for a fact that Sherlock couldn't have left the house; the man was much too wobbly to even make it down the stairs. Completely exhausted from his violent purge of everything useful from the flat, he had now taken up residence on the sofa bundled up in some thin pilfered shock blankets, in an unidentifiable long-limbed lump, coughing and hacking, and outright refusing to let John come anywhere near him. He had almost fallen over the back of the sofa the last time John had attempted to take his temperature, growling at John's attempts at smalltalk, and turning his pale nose up at any food offerings, nostrils flaring with resentment.

"I don't see what the problem is!" John had finally snapped, when Sherlock had refused the third cup of tea John had deigned to make for him, "You never usually have any trouble taking advantage of me."

John was thinking of the time when they had first met, and he had taken a cab all the way from the other side of London after a confrontation with, and subsequent bribery from, his new flatmate's 'arch-enemy', who also turned out to be his intimidating elder brother, and the sodding British government to boot, all just to send a text for Sherlock, who hadn't fancied using his own phone which was just inside his left jacket pocket.

It didn't make sense that Sherlock wouldn't take advantage of the fact that he was a bloody doctor and could help the idiot get better faster; he was supposed to be a man of logic.

"John," said Sherlock, with a raised eyebrow at his statement, "People are already talking about our _distinctive_ relationship, there is no need to fuel the fire further."

What? He replayed the words that he had just uttered in his head. Oh. _Oh_. "I didn't mean like that! You know what I meant."

A small smirk.

"The point is, you normally don't mind me helping. Sort of."

A throaty sigh. Sherlock looked as though he wasn't going to bother responding, but then he put an arm over his eyes and said: "This isn't a case, John. There are no insights I need to glean from you hovering over me like a mother-hen. In this, you are quite dull. Superfluous."

"Well thanks for clearing that up." Said John, setting his tea mug down with more force than was strictly necessary, and causing the brown liquid to slosh over the rim and onto the tabletop.

Sherlock lifted his arm and eyed the spillage for a moment, correctly deducing that he had somehow angered his flatmate, before rolling his eyes. "I didn't mean that." He said, a little softly. "Your help is… bothersome, sentimental." He settled on the right word, "Annoying."

"You've just said the same thing twice!" Snapped John. "Was that supposed to be an apology?"

Sherlock growled in frustration. "No! I'm not going to apologise for pointing out the obvious. John, I value your skills as a doctor, I value your loyalty and your skill with a gun… and your other… things," John was looking at him now with his eyebrows raised, as if to say 'go on, try and dig yourself out of this one'. Sherlock failed miserably. "However, you are an incessant worrywart, there is nothing you can do for me that I cannot do for myself, and I do wish you would just piss off and let me die in peace."

John allowed himself a smug smile, his anger simmering into petulance. "Which is exactly why you know I won't leave."

He opened up a rather rumpled and tea-ringed copy of _The Daily Telegraph_ and proceeded to pretend to read it, although he knew he wasn't fooling Sherlock who was observing him with sleepy, disgruntled eyes every time he tried to surreptitiously glance over the top of the crinkled pages at him.

"Creepy." Was Sherlock's grumbled deduction, as he tucked his nose into the crook of the elbow that he had resting on the arm of the sofa, and closed his eyes.

Despite being exhausted, the detective was never still for too long. He changed positions, facing the back of the cushions and drawing his long legs up, bare feet visible under the covers. He stayed that way for a few minutes. And then shifted, the old springs in the sofa groaning at the ill-treatment. When John looked back next, Sherlock's limbs hung over the sides of the arms with all the grace of a gangly new-born giraffe. A couple of seconds later he flumped onto his back.

And groaned loudly.

"Go to sleep." John said, returning his gaze to his newspaper.

"BORING." Came the reply.

"You're tired. Your body needs rest to recover."

An indignant snort. "I'm lying down, aren't I? I _am_ resting."

"You're fidgeting. That's not resting."

Sherlock sat up now, flinging the covers about him like a villain's cape. "That's because I'm _bored_!" He snapped, and the erupted into a few coughs. "I do detest having to repeat myself, John. What are you supposed to do, anyway, when you're," he gestured to himself, pale eyes hot and bothered, "_incapacitated_. And don't say sleep, or I shall burn your jumpers."

"What?" John sighed, exasperatedly. It was like dealing with a poorly two year old. "Come on. You must have been sick before, surely?"

Sherlock blinked at him. A vein in the pale forehead began to pulse.

"_Surely_. When you were kid, you know chicken pox, a cold, something?"

"Deleted it." Sherlock said, indifferently. He was sweating again, curls lying damp and tangled on his white forehead. "Irrelevant. My mind is stagnating. Festering. Rotting."

John straightened out his newspaper, blue eyes reading over the same sentence he had been attempting to decipher for the past ten minutes. "Charming imagery. I don't want to think of your brain decomposing, thanks. It was bad enough having to see that one in the fridge. I never want to see a mouldy brain ever again, after having seen one exploded all over the kitchen. Mrs. Hudson was beside herself."

"Build up of gases." Sherlock explained, absently, "I may have added a few things to make it more interesting. It was an experiment."

"It was bloody _terrifying_."

"Yes, it was. And that's what's happening to _mine_! Come on. What are you supposed to do all day? Marinade in your own monotony?"

"I dunno." Said John helpfully, "Watch some telly. Sleep. Eat."

"I'm _dying_, John. Don't seek to irritate me on my death bed. It's _cruel_. I don't think much of your bedside manner!"

John flicked the television on and folded up his paper. Sherlock obviously wanted his full attention, and wouldn't stop whining until he had it. "Budge up." he said.

Sherlock scowled. But he begrudgingly shifted up a little so that John could sit beside him on the sofa.

…

It was a few hours later, when there came a loud knock at the door. John was no Sherlock, but even he recognised the familiar sound of the quick gait and well-worn shoes on the stairs.

The Detective Inspector had texted ahead, although John hadn't known about it. He'd managed to actually steal Sherlock's phone away from the younger man while he was snoring vulnerably on the sofa, his head pillowed on John's shoulder, after the reruns of old talk shows had finally caused him to conk out. John had quickly snatched the device from Sherlock's dressing gown pocket, turned it off and hidden it.

He couldn't believe he'd actually gotten away with the theft, for all of two minutes, and then Sherlock had sat bolt upright, with his hair as bedraggled as a wet cat, he had blinked owlishly, once, twice, and then his features had dissolved immediately into anger and he ordered that John give the phone back 'on pain of death by chemical warfare'.

He hadn't even looked in his pocket, nor woken up properly if the following yawn and rub of his eyes was anything to go by, but then, John supposed that Sherlock could read the guilt in him as clear as he could see the nose on John's face.

"Give it to me." Sherlock had snarled.

John had told him no, got him a cup of tea, and said that when he was well enough to get up off the sofa, then he could get it for himself. No doubt he had already figured out where John had hidden the offending item anyway, because he was so bloody clever.

Sherlock had glowered at him, told John he was capable of getting it back any time he wanted, thank you very much, and that John shouldn't have put it in the microwave because it was too obvious, and he 'didn't really care about the blasted thing anyway', and had then fallen back in an exhausted huff with his eyelids drooping and his mouth stuck in a permanent scowl.

"He in?" Lestrade asked as soon as John had opened the door, "I've been ringing, but it kept going to answer phone."

John stepped aside to let him inside and pointed at the sofa where the sickly lump that was the great Sherlock Holmes was currently residing, coughing something dreadful and sniffling into tissues.

Lestrade looked surprised, John couldn't blame him. He never would have guessed that Sherlock could do something as mind-numbingly human as to succumb to an illness, but he had seen the truth with his own eyes, and now he was just hoping to god that this brief unnerving departure from normality wouldn't last too long. He didn't think his nerves could take much more of this.

"What's going on?" Lestrade asked, obviously thinking the worst. And why shouldn't he? It must be something bloody devastating to have taken down the Great Detective. "He sounds bloody awful… Is he _sick_?"

"Transport betrayal." Muttered Sherlock, with a sniff, exasperation and self-pity vying for dominance on his pale face. He closed his eyes, mouth pulling into a frown. "John," He said calmly, albeit hoarsely, "I have decided that I want to live out the rest of my life as a brain in a vat. You can wheel me to crime scenes; I'm sure you can fashion some sort of trolley, perhaps pilfer one from the morgue in St Bart's. I'll have to do without the running around London after culprits, but that is a small price to pay for retaining my sanity. Fetch me the necessary extraction equipment from the kitchen and we'll say no more about this blasted mess."

Lestrade blinked. "Is he… all right?"

John let out a frustrated breath. "He's been the absolute _worst_ patient I have ever had to deal with, and I want to kill him."

"So that's a yes, then?"

"He's fine," John said, wishing he actually believed it, "he's overreacting."

"I'm _dying_." Sniffed Sherlock, throwing a box of empty tissues at the wall and pouting profusely. "If you've got a case for me then give it to me already, otherwise get out."

Lestrade looked at the detective for a moment before deciding against it. "It's not that interesting," he lied, and Sherlock sat up a bit, a bloodhound catching the scent. "I think we can handle it."

"Give it to me." Sherlock said sharply, stretching his arm out from under the confines of the blankets, and beckoning impatiently with his pale fingers.

"No." Said Lestrade, "Look if it gets worse, I'll come back, okay?"

"_Gimme_." Said Sherlock.

Lestrade nodded at John with a look that clearly said 'good luck' as retreated to the door. "Get well soon, Sherlock." He said before he turned and headed down the stairs as if the very winds of hell were at his heels. John watched him go with a trace of amusement, he was probably scarpering before Sherlock could lunge at him from the sofa and send them both sprawling to the floor, grappling for a hold on the case file and splurging its grizzly contents all over the carpet.

Well that's what would have happened, if Sherlock wasn't sick.

Sherlock's hand dropped from where he had been reaching for the file, clenching into a fist that made his knuckles turn white. He growled in obvious frustration and thumped the arm of the sofa, but made no move to get up.

John was instantly worried, maybe there was more to Sherlock's symptoms than he had first diagnosed, the idiot must be feeling bad if he couldn't even manage to tackle the Detective Chief Inspector for a decent case.

"You all right?" he said, trying to keep the anxious concern out of his voice and failing miserably.

Sherlock fixed him with a glare. "Why don't you go and do something useful, like check on the -" he coughed, and then kept coughing.

John made a move to come forward and help him sit up but Sherlock glowered at him and gestured at him to piss off. Which he did, for a moment, before returning with a glass of cool water.

Sherlock seized it immediately, drinking down the liquid, and then taking in shaky tentative breaths once the coughing has subsided. "- the eyelids in the nutella jar, bottom right of the cup cupboard," he continued in a hoarse voice, as if he had never been interrupted. "Note down their shrivelled appearance and precise measurements. Twice. Do this on the hour, every hour until my express -" His voice went a little squeaky and he cleared his throat, "- express say so. I don't want to miss out on valuable -" here he coughed again, until his cheeks turned pink, a hand flailed about for the water he had positioned at his feet. John picked it up and placed it in his hands. He drank the rest down in one fell swoop; the hands holding the glass were trembling noticeably. John took it off him before he could drop it, "- data just because I'm feeling a little under the weather." Sherlock finished croakily, avoiding his eyes.

"Under the weather?" John huffed in disbelief, "You can barely even _speak_ without hacking up a lung. Do me a favour and go back to bed."

Sherlock looked at him.

Well, John knew that was a long shot, but it had certainly been worth a try.

"Fine then, you can sleep here. I'll get the blankets. Just rest, for god's sake." Sherlock opened his mouth to speak but John cut him off, "Yes, okay, I'll measure your damn eyelids. No more talking." Sherlock raised his eyebrows a fraction, "_And_ I'll note down what the shrunken bits of skin look like. Honestly, Sherlock. What can you even use this data for? No, no don't answer that. I don't want to know."

He retrieved Sherlock's duvet from his bedraggled room and stuck one of the dark blue pillows under his arm for good measure, at least he could see to it that his idiotic deranged flatmate wouldn't get a crick in his neck on top of everything else he had wrong with him. He then made his way back to the lounge with his finds, and proceeded to bundle Sherlock up on the sofa like a sick child. Which he basically was.

The detective did nothing but roll his eyes and swing his feet up onto the sofa beside him as the duvet was plonked on top of him, and the pillow wedged under his head. A fresh glass of water was placed within reach along with two capsules of paracetemol and the television remote.

And then, with one last look at the sickly detective, whose only visible trait that marked him out as Sherlock Holmes at all being the tuft of dark curls that spouted out from under the mound of duvet, John went into the kitchen, pulled out the nutella jar and measured the damn shrunken eyelids. Twice.

…

…

_Thanks for reading!_


End file.
